Light and dark

[34]

THE WAY home took Tsuda to the right and Kobayashi straight ahead, but as Tsuda bid the other a polite farewell, touching his hand to his hat, Kobayashi looked at him piercingly and said, “I’ll go your way.” In the direction they were heading, places to eat and drink lined the street for several blocks. Midway along they came upon an establishment that might have been a bar, with a glass door warmly illuminated from the inside, and Kobayashi abruptly stopped.

“This looks good. Let’s go in here.”

“Not me.”

“We won’t find the kind of classy place you’d like around here — let’s make do with this.”

“I happen to be ill.”

“I guarantee you’ll be fine so you don’t have to worry.”

“You can’t be serious — I’m not setting foot in there.”

“How about if I promise to make the excuses to Mrs. T. on your behalf?”

Fed up, Tsuda moved quickly away, leaving Kobayashi where he stood. But his friend fell in alongside him and continued in a more serious tone.

“Is having a drink with me so very disagreeable?”

It was exactly that, very disagreeable. At Kobayashi’s words Tsuda stopped at once; the decision he expressed was entirely opposite his inclination.

“Let’s have a drink, then.”

Opening the illuminated glass door, they stepped inside. There were only five or six customers, but the room was narrow and appeared crowded. Having chosen seats facing each other in a corner that seemed easy of access, they eyed their surroundings, waiting for the sake they had ordered, with a certain curious unfamiliarity.

Judging by the dress of the other customers, there was no one in the bar with any social standing. A fellow who appeared to be on his way home from the bath, a wet towel over the shoulder of his kimono jacket, and another in a cotton robe and plain obi with a piece of artificial jade thrust ostentatiously into the drawstring of his jacket represented, if anything, the fashionable end of things. Very much at the opposite end was someone who could only have been a ragman. Intermingled with the others was also a laborer in his smock and worker’s tights.

“It’s a nice proletarian atmosphere.” Kobayashi observed, filling Tsuda’s cup with sake. His flashy, three-piece suit obtruded in Tsuda’s vision as if in contradiction of his remark, but Kobayashi himself seemed oblivious.

“Unlike you, I always feel in sympathy with the working class.”

Looking very much as if he were surrounded by a band of brothers, Kobayashi surveyed the room.

“See for yourself. Those physiognomies are finer than anything you’d find among the upper crust.”

In lieu of looking around him, Tsuda, lacking the courage to respond, peered at Kobayashi, who pedaled back a step.

“You have to admit they’re appealingly tipsy.”

“The upper class doesn’t get tipsy?”

“Not appealingly.”

Tsuda declined defiantly to pursue the distinction.

Undaunted, Kobayashi poured one cup of sake after another.

“I know you hold these people in contempt. You look down on them as unworthy of your sympathy.”

No sooner than had he spoken, without waiting for Tsuda to respond, than he called out to a youngster who might have been a milkman, “Hey there, don’t you agree?”

The young man addressed in this manner twisted his head on a power ful neck and glanced at them, whereupon Kobayashi thrust a cup toward him.

“In any case, have a drink.”

The young man grinned. Unfortunately, a distance of some six feet separated him and Kobayashi; feeling no need of standing to accept the cup, he merely smiled and didn’t move. Even that seemed to satisfy Kobayashi. Withdrawing the cup and lifting it to his own lips, he spoke again to Tsuda. “You see how it is? There’s not a conceited soul in the room.”